Yesterday we posted a story
about the IBM developerWorks'KDE
Theme Contest. It quickly became apparent that the contest had a few
shortcomings, which were noted in another update and in the comments from
our readership. It turns out that the people working on the contest were
new to the Open Source community and KDE and did not realize the mistakes
that were made. I drew IBM's attention
to these problems and when the Open Source leadership at IBM noted them
they immediately recognized and corrected them.
An explanation from Shailendra
follows. Kudos to IBM for being so receptive and responsive to our
community! (Also check out the NewsForgestory on this.)

Due to an overwhelming response from the community, calling us on a
few not-so-subtle gaffs, we have changed our KDE theme contest. First and
foremost, entering the contest does not mean you are giving us ownership of
your code or exclusive rights to it (we'll be sacrificing a lawyer to the OSS
gods for that rule tonight at midnight). All your entries (see revised rule 7
on thecontest
page) must be licensed under an OSI-approved public software license. Yes,
we screwed that one up the first time. Apologies!

Secondly, so that we can make the contest open for contestants worldwide,
winners will be able to choose a non-profit, Open Source organization to which
dW will make a donation on the winner's behalf. Unfortunately, giving away
cash worldwide is another legal quagmire we were trying to keep our foot
out of. Turns out we put it in our mouths instead :)

Finally, themes eligible for the contest are to be compliant with KDE 2.x or
KDE 1.x, not versions 1.1.x and 1.2 as we accidently wrote in our previous
rules! Whew!

Comments

Great! Seems like IBM is getting it - accept feedback and work with the community....

Another thing they should probably change is the deadline. I imagine that a really good theme needs
more time than 2 weeks to make. This way they will limit the number of possible participants (who
doesn't have the time right now to do this) and make do with an assemblage of relatively hurried work.

You are right: It is nice to see this reaction of IBM and sacrificing one of their thousands of lawyers surely is a very good idea!

Even more nice would be to let us choose *whom* to sacrifice: I would like to select one of their top-patent-layers!

Honest, cari amici, of course it is nice (and wise) that they have reacted that way this time but while 'praising' them do NOT forget that IBM is constantly filing lots (and I mean LOTS) of patents worldwide!

They are the main fighter for software-patents in the european community - this does *not* look like a main friend of free software would act - a themes contest doesn't change this at all!

I once had a boss who told us "Just put money on it!" when being asked how to solve a problem.

The funny "We love Linux." thing presented to us by IBM recently reminds me to that former boss: IBM seems to think that putting money on Linux is the way to salvation. Perhaps it is a good thing for IBM to do this but does that mean it is also a good thing for the Linux Community?

In my (absolutely unimportant) opinion the patents-issue should be addressed aggressively next time the wannabe nice people from IBM are offering their so-called help!

Money from people who (at the very same time!) are die hard fighting against fundamental open source ways of sharing ideas and sharing code is kind of bad money.

How about this: IBM tries to get as many software patents as possible, only to let the open source community use them freely! Patents are of no danger if the owner of the patent is your friend . It's just a silly dream, I know :-(

IBM sells Linux systems, but mostly business oriented(Suse Servers, and Caldera Notebooks). Tell me when they start pre-installing Loki game packs on Linux boxes... Not until then are they selling CONSUMER desktops.